Anamnesis Appendices
by Aurora West
Summary: A collection of stories set in the world of my Vorta origin story, 'Anamnesis.'
1. 60,062: Fourteenthmonth

Disclaimer: _Star Trek: Deep Space Nine_ is the property of Paramount.

Author's note: It turns out I can't let go of 'Anamnesis'...Weyoun, Eris, Deimos, Leto, et al still have a firm grip on my writing heart all these years later. As I've been trying to work on some other _Star Trek_ fanfiction, I've also been writing random scenes that take place during the timeline of 'Anamnesis', but for one reason or another never would have worked in the story itself. I'll be publishing them here for the heck of it. If you're reading, thanks, I appreciate it!

* * *

Weyoun told himself he wasn't abdicating responsibility. He owed nothing to these people, and he knew that Deimos would have said the same thing. His relationship with his family was—had been, _had been_ —strained. "Strained is putting it nicely," Deimos had always laughed. He'd gone to his niece's Naming Day a year ago; he'd sat in the chair right in front of Weyoun now and told him how much he'd been dreading it, and Weyoun had picked up an envelope and said, "Pretend you're not for my sake. I'm invited too."

Deimos had snatched the envelope from him, groaning, "Oh, how _pretentious_ ; they actually _posted_ this to you." He'd rolled his eyes and tossed it back onto Weyoun's desk. "I apologize for my family, and don't feel compelled to go. It would actually give me great pleasure to tell them you've got better things to do."

But Weyoun had chuckled and said, "No, I always have to keep reelection in mind. Every vote counts, you know. These are the sacrifices that must be made in a senator's life."

With a sigh, Deimos had said, "They've been dying to show off their connection to you, if I know them. Well." He'd leaned back in the chair and crossed one leg over the other. "At least the food will be good. They won't skimp if they think they're going to have an important guest."

The memory was so visceral that Weyoun looked at the chair now, convinced for an idiotic fraction of a second that he would see Deimos sitting there. Stupid. Deimos was gone. Blown to atoms somewhere near the scattered disc, millions of kilometers away at the edge of the solar system. The thought was a hard punch in the gut that he was never going to get used to, and he had to grit his teeth and grip the edge of his desk to keep the lump of cold iron in his throat from turning to tears. He was a senator from Tira Exarchate. He hadn't cried since he was a child.

His office interface lit up to remind him he had three unlistened to voice messages, followed a moment later by his padd doing the same, like an echo. All three were from Deimos's family, and he had watched all of them come in and ignore them. What did he have to say to them? What did they _want_ him to say? _Your brother knew the risks but it was my job to mitigate them, and I didn't_. Was he sorry? Being sorry wouldn't bring Deimos back. Being sorry didn't change the fact that Deimos would have gotten on that orbital even if Weyoun had tried to halt the launch.

He had every right to ignore them—the brother Deimos had never measured up to, the father he could never make happy, let alone impress. The familial estrangement was something that Weyoun had instinctively understood in Deimos when they were both sixteen and their friendship newly-minted and tentative. They'd had _that_ in common, even if it had been the only thing. Or seemed like the only thing, anyway. What could a gutter-scum kid have in common with the wealthy scion of Tira City's biggest property manager?

The interface pinged with an incoming message, and Weyoun forced himself to look at the sender. The relief that it was only a message from Facilities was almost embarrassing. If he didn't care about talking to Deimos's family, then why was he dreading listening to these voice messages or receiving a text message? He didn't _think_ he was afraid of being accused that he'd killed their son. He knew he hadn't, even though he also knew that Telecorps would say he had. The fail-safes in the orbital had been almost nonexistent, whittled down over the years, essentially, to an EVA suit with a transponder that could be folded up and stowed under the orbital's single seat. There hadn't been any way to make it safe. Not without years more of planning and testing, and none of them had wanted to wait that long.

Maybe it had been his job to make them wait.

"I'm going to go to space someday," Deimos had said. They'd been, Founders, seventeen? Holed up in their shared dormitory, ostensibly doing schoolwork but in reality doing anything but. The iron in Weyoun's throat grew several centimeters. When was the last time he'd thought about that night? Deimos had been lying flat on his back on the floor, several padds piled beside him that he'd abandoned, and a sketchbook propped on his knees while his pencil swept over it confidently. He'd sketched constantly in those days.

Weyoun had glanced over at him from his seat at his desk, where he'd been trying to force himself to keep writing about contract law and failing miserably. "On what?" he'd asked with a laugh.

Deimos had sat up and flipped his sketchpad around. "On one of these," he'd replied, tapping a finger on the page.

Squinting at it, Weyoun had said, "You can't go to space on a shuttle. They can't fly that high." This was a guess, as the closest he'd been to a shuttle in his entire life was watching them fly overhead as they made their approach into or departure from Tira City Shuttleport.

With a shrug, Deimos had replied, "I'll make them, then." With a crooked grin, he'd added, "You can help me get the funding once you're comfortable in your Capitol Complex office."

"Do you think I'll need to understand three centuries' old contract law to get there?" Weyoun had asked, returning the grin.

Deimos had laid back down, one arm behind his head and his sketchpad and pencil resting on his stomach. "Of course not, you only have to fake it well enough."

It wasn't possible that he was gone. And yet, he very clearly _was_. Weyoun wouldn't, couldn't, put any credence in the fairy tales that some of the media outlets were indulging in—that Deimos might still be alive out there, that Ground Control simply needed to find the escape pod. Or better yet, the Jem'Hadar could find it. The joke would be on them when they found out—there hadn't been any escape pods. The initial design had included them but they'd been sacrificed somewhere along the way for…well, who knew. Another meter of living space? More fuel? Water? He couldn't even remember now, though it must have been important at the time. Deimos himself had pushed for the change, insisting, probably correctly, that no safety measures they attempted to put in place could possibly be sufficient. "Like putting a rowboat on the first ship to circumvent the globe," he'd said.

"I'm sure they had rowboats," Weyoun had pointed out.

"Yes, and they could have used that space for extra food," Deimos had replied cheerfully.

At the time, he'd imagined being adrift on the Ocean, and how hopeless that would seem—a yawning black chasm of despair. How much would one have to multiply that empty space to equal the distances in their solar system alone? Being lost out there would be worse than hopeless. Being dead might be better. At least the recording of Deimos's—of the shuttle's destruction had made it sound quick.

The interface pinged again, this time for an incoming voice call, and Weyoun glanced at it. His stomach clenched at the name. Bolina Ekroi. Deimos's mother, and the only member of his immediate family who hadn't tried to contact him. For a moment, he turned his head away. But then, he sighed and turned back. The father and brother, he could ignore. But Deimos had never held his mother in quite the same contempt, and that made Weyoun prickly with guilt.

He reached out and tapped the screen, waiting for the connection, still milliseconds slower on the backup comm system. An older woman appeared there, the sort of woman who always appeared perfectly coiffed, as though she could hold age and time back with the right skin care routine, and for whom it seemed to be working. But Bolina Ekroi looked tired now. Not just tired, weary. Could he blame her? Her son was gone, a son that she'd never understood. Though if he'd read between the lines of Deimos's scoffing correctly, she'd tried harder than he'd given her credit for.

"Hello, Doyenne Ekroi," he said, inclining his head.

"Senator Uldron," she said, then hesitated and added, "I suppose it's too forward to call you Weyoun."

It was. Unquestionably, it was. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd met Deimos's family, and he had never been on a first name basis with them. It was hard to see past years of the hurt that they'd caused his friend. All through university, Deimos had barely talked about them, but Weyoun had been able to see the haunted look in his eyes when he returned from school holidays. He'd finally met them at matriculation, Deimos pulling him aside before they'd filed out to receive their degrees to say, "My parents came."

Weyoun had looked at him in surprise. "I thought…" But he had trailed off, not wanting to reopen an old wound. Two years previously, Deimos's father had cut off financial support to him when he had refused to transfer to Parthos Finance and Business College and, when Deimos still hadn't budged, the man had threatened disowning him on top of it. Deimos had secured multiple scholarships within weeks to pay his tuition, and a tutoring job to pay his personal expenses. "Why would they come tonight?" Weyoun added instead.

The reason for the fallout had been Deimos's chosen course of study. Astronomy, Weyoun had been given to understand, wasn't considered an acceptable career path for an Ekron boy, and the fact that Deimos had defied his father on that was bad enough. The fact that he'd added to it a concentration in public policy, instead of going to Parthos, was unforgivable.

Deimos had grimaced. "Appearances. My father's trying to buy up four blocks in the East Loop. It wouldn't look good to miss your youngest son's matriculation." With a sour look, he'd said, "You're lucky your parents are dead."

"I know," Weyoun had replied. A classmate, obviously eavesdropping on this conversation, had actually started at this, then flushed purple at having been caught when Weyoun looked at her.

Burying his fingers in his hair in frustration, Deimos had said, "I wish I hadn't told them about you. I could pretend you were my boyfriend and tell them we want to celebrate alone." At Weyoun's twitch of a smile, he'd added, "Oh, you're right. They'd never believe it—you even _look_ too smart to date me."

The classmate who was still clearly eavesdropping colored a bit at this too, and Weyoun had no doubt that she wouldn't mind pretending to date Deimos. A non-trivial percentage of their class was half or more in love with him. It was tempting to suggest this but Deimos was clearly in real distress, and so Weyoun had lowered his voice and said, "Do they want to go out? I'm happy to come." He hesitated. "I'll tell them I'm from Ulthris. That will make me a curiosity; they'll forget all about being disapproving."

Deimos had looked surprised. Weyoun himself was a little surprised. He rarely spoke the name of his home district out loud, let alone admitted to those outside his confidence that he'd come from there. Then again, Memnon and Bolina Ekron would be able to identify the origin of his surname, so there wasn't much point in pretending to more lofty origins. There was no one else he would have done this for—but Deimos was different, more like a brother than a mere friend. More a brother than the one he was related to by blood, certainly. "I'll tell them you're coming," Deimos had said, his tone careful and appreciative, and beneath that, grateful.

After the ceremony, they had changed out of their robes. Deimos had taken his time hunting for the pins that held them on, obviously delaying the inevitable as long as possible. Weyoun had idly asked, as though an hour hadn't passed since the initial conversation, "They don't care about that, do they? Who you date?" Hundreds of years ago, same-sex relationships had been a societal sticking point. Now it only mattered to fringe idiots, delusional lunatics predicting a birthrate apocalypse if every Vorta didn't do his or her part to sustain the population. They hated hormone patches too. Weyoun hoped Deimos's family weren't _those_ kinds of people.

With a snort, Deimos said, "No. They don't care if I end up with a woman or a man, they just want grandchildren to carry on the family name. I almost wish they _did_ care, then their absurdity would be more obvious to the rest of the world."

It was true that their faults weren't on display to the world at large. Both parents had taken Weyoun's hand when Deimos introduced them—politely, even warmly. "Deimos has told us about you," his mother had said. "We're glad he's had a friend like you to keep him out of trouble."

"To set a good example, it sounds like," his father had said, giving Deimos a look that Weyoun was sure was supposed to be jocular and fatherly. Deimos's expression didn't crack so the attempt fell flat.

Responses had flitted through Weyoun's head, from bland to polite to beyond the pale of good manners, but what he settled on was, "Your son is the most intelligent person I've ever met. I'm lucky to have his example."

The man had practically single-handedly designed two manned orbital systems, from launchpad up, from the anti-radiation coating on the duraplastic shell to the placement of every button of the control consoles inside. He would have argued and said the huge team of scientists had done most of the work, that Weyoun and Foros had been the ones to secure the funding and make it all possible. And that would have been true, but the simple fact was that Deimos had been the linchpin holding it all together, checking everything, advising, making suggestions, tweaking. He had _been_ Kurill Prime's space program.

Weyoun wondered if Deimos's mother appreciated that. He didn't think his father ever had.

"Whatever you wish, Doyenne," he replied. Calling him by his first name may have been too forward, but on the other hand, they had both lost the same person, and that alone might have been connection enough between them.

She bowed her head, and when she looked back into the interface, her eyes had a sheen of unshed tears. It was a look that Weyoun was afraid he'd been sporting over the past several weeks too—a glassy shine of suppressed emotion that took every ounce of willpower to keep down. "I'm sorry to impose on you at your offices," she said. "My husband and son have tried contacting you, but haven't received a response…you must be very busy."

A twinge of shame twisted through his gut but he drew in a breath through his nose and reminded himself that he owed Bolina Ekroi nothing. "I'm always busy," he replied, trying to sound pleasant rather than churlish. "But I have a few minutes. What can I help you with?" As though she were just another constituent, and not the mother of his dead best friend.

Doyenne Ekroi blinked rapidly, trying to clear the sheen from her eyes. "I'm afraid I'm going to ask rather too much of you, Weyoun," she said, as though now that he'd given her his blessing to use his first name, she had to make it worth the permission. Her voice cracked as she started to speak again, and she had to stop, clear her throat, and pause to gather herself. Then, she went on, "You—you knew Deimos better than anyone else."

Weyoun didn't argue with this. Of course the polite thing to do would have been to demur and insist that as his blood relatives, surely his family had known him better. But he wasn't in the mood for farce, and he didn't think the doyenne was, either. He nodded, knowing that if he tried to speak the truth— _He was like a brother to me_ —that the words would never make it out.

She was twisting her fingers together. On the few occasions he'd met her, Weyoun had thought she seemed like a nervous woman. Odd, when her son was exactly the opposite. Poised, charming, always confident. Maybe too confident. He'd always taken risks, and in the end it had killed him. "I was hoping," Doyenne Ekroi said, "that you might…tell me about him."

For a moment, Weyoun just sat there, unsure of what to say. Deimos would have appreciated that—Weyoun Uldron, stunned into silence. It didn't happen often. But the doyenne was staring at him expectantly, so he said, "I'm…not sure what you're asking."

Her fingers were still twisted together. "We…Deimos and I…his father…we didn't see each other as often as I would have liked." She smiled unhappily. "I only knew what he was doing by reading news stories about him when he did something noteworthy." Which had been frequently. "I read the daily political briefings, too, even though he didn't appear in them as often, once he took that job at Ground Control…"

Weyoun knew she hadn't meant anything with this comment, knew that he was reading intention into it that hadn't been there, but he still had to force himself not to bristle at her words. _That job at Ground Control_. Deimos's parents hadn't approved of his position at the science lobby, and Weyoun knew they hadn't felt much differently about his being head of the space program.

The day he'd moved out of the Complex, Deimos had been by turns ebullient and wistful. Weyoun had been amused and a little sad, and it had been bittersweet helping him box up everything in his office down in the warren of the science lobby's offices. Deimos had carefully wrapped up a gift Eris had given him two birthdays ago, a blown glass model of Kurill and its two moons, all three of which spun on their axes in scaled down, miniature sync, both glass moons staying tidally locked just as Vrilla and Soura actually did. "I'm going to miss it here," he'd said, looking around at the bare walls.

The office felt huge with almost everything packed away. Weyoun had glanced around. "Could you even see any of it under all of your clutter to miss it?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "I don't think I've ever seen that wall." He had no right to talk, really, as his office was just as bad, if not worse.

Deimos had grinned. "Want to come to Ground Control and help me arrange everything properly in my new office?"

"You'll have underlings for that." Weyoun glanced at him. "It _will_ be strange not having you here." He'd paused, then added, "I'll finally be able to eat breakfast in peace."

That had made Deimos laugh. "Likewise." Had Eris been there, she would have pursed her lips in barely concealed amusement and told them that it was all right to admit how much they were both going to miss working with each other. Their daily routine of having breakfast together had always been an anchor for Weyoun, and he knew it had been for Deimos, as well. They had been a fixture in the canteen for fourteen years, to the point that one of Weyoun's colleagues, when word had gone around that Deimos was leaving the Complex, had glued a plaque bearing their names on the canteen table they always sat at. A joke, though not entirely. Deimos had been popular, especially if his going-away party had been any indication. But halfway through that party, he'd sought out Weyoun and Eris, handed both of them drinks, grabbed their arms, and muttered, "Let's go, before anyone notices I'm missing."

Weyoun put a stack of books in a box. "I've mentioned that I'm very happy for you, haven't I?"

"No." Deimos peeked in the box that Weyoun had been filling, then added several wrapped items from his desk to it. He flashed a smile at Weyoun. "But you didn't have to. You're an open book, Senator."

Snorting, Weyoun said, "I hope not."

Deimos fiddled with the placement of the knick-knacks in the box. "Only to a select few," he'd said. His smile had grown wider and he'd said solicitously, "And you know what an honor I consider it that I'm one of them."

"You _think_ you're one of them," Weyoun had said. Then, he'd straightened up. "I am, though, Deimos. Happy for you. You deserve this job. If they'd given it to anyone else, I would have drafted legislation to undo it." Surprise had flashed in Deimos's eyes. Well, this had been perilously close to the type of open emotion that they didn't show, not to each other. "I wouldn't abuse my power for just anyone," Weyoun had added, meaning it as a joke, even though it probably hadn't come off that way.

After a moment, Deimos slung an arm around Weyoun's shoulders. "You should come to Ground Control next week," he said. "Sincerely. Seriously. I'll give you the tour—we'll probably get lost, just like we did that day we toured the Complex. Remember that, our second year at university?"

Weyoun had laughed. "I'd forgotten about that; it was that tour for students who thought they might be interested in careers in politics. It was our fault for wandering off, I suppose."

"We weren't wandering, we were convinced we knew our way around after a cursory walk around a fraction of the building." Deimos hadn't moved his arm, but his gaze had grown distant. "That was a long time ago."

There was a silence, and in the quiet, sounds from the rest of the science lobby intruded. The offices were always busy and loud, and even though many of the staff had left for the evening, the sound of aides and lobbyists rushing around, working on hearings and legislation they were advising on, leaked through the door. Weyoun had put his arm around Deimos's shoulders and patted him on the back. "Could you have imagined any of this?" he'd asked.

Deimos had gripped Weyoun's shoulder once, hard, and then stepped away. "Of course," he'd said. "I always knew both of us were going places, and neither of us would stop."

Raising an eyebrow, Weyoun had said, "We have to hit the ceiling sometime."

With a shrug, Deimos had said, "Ignore it. Break it. There's always more."

Was this what Bolina Ekroi wanted to know? This type of anecdote, laying bare Deimos's pure drive to go beyond what anyone else had done, to make something of himself that he'd never have to share with anyone? Weyoun didn't think so. She—and his father, and perhaps even his dullard brother—must have known this about Deimos. It was one of the things that had driven a wedge between all of them long ago. He couldn't be happy with what they had or what they could give him, and he'd never intended to settle for what they wanted him to be.

Still, there was something sad about her trying to know her son through daily political briefings. Weyoun had always rather thought they made him seem the most boring and pedantic man on the planet. Or was it galaxy, now? Deimos would fare a little better, but the writers of those briefs weren't hired for their style.

Weyoun hesitated, then finally said slowly, "I consider myself very lucky to know him. _Have_ known him. You know how intelligent he was, Doyenne, and he wasn't just my friend, he was a colleague…one of the best I ever had…" It sounded like he was delivering a eulogy, and he clamped his mouth shut. Of course this wasn't what she wanted. _You aren't beholden to these people_. Perhaps not, but she was a connection to Deimos; he could see that he had his mother's eyes and nose, and the shape of her ears, too. And it hurt—it hurt very, very much, and she was feeling the same pain.

His fingernails dug into the grain on his desk, and he drew a breath and tried again. "We had breakfast together every day," he said. "While Deimos worked at the Complex. We talked about…everything, I suppose. Our jobs, everything that went wrong, everything that went right. Our personal lives, when we had them. He introduced me to my wife. He made me laugh." This final statement was so puerile sounding, but so true, that his throat closed up. He had to look down at his fingers, purple rimmed and bloodless from the grip he had on the edge of his desk.

There was a noise from the interface, but Weyoun didn't look up. "I'm sorry," Doyenne Ekroi's voice said thickly. Weyoun hoped she wasn't crying. "I'm so sorry that he's gone."

"I am too," Weyoun said quietly. Finally, he forced himself to look back up, meeting her eyes. Her tears were still unshed. "Deimos had the ability to make any situation…manageable. Somehow when he talked about something, about anything, even if he really didn't have any idea, you felt as though…" He trailed off, then went on, "It wasn't that you thought _he_ could accomplish anything, but he had this way of making everything seem like it wasn't as difficult as you'd first imagined."

Doyenne Ekroi looked down at her own hands. "His father thought he didn't take things seriously."

A flare of rage burned through Weyoun at this admission, probably a decades-old argument at this point. Deimos's father was an idiot. "That was very much not the case," he said, trying to keep his tone level. It was harder than it should have been. He was a good politician, but hiding his feelings these days had been proving quite impossible. He supposed he wasn't trying very hard. There didn't seem any point.

She looked back up at him, her gaze suddenly piercing. "I have another favor to ask of you, Weyoun." When he continued to look at her, she drew in a breath. At last, a tear slipped down her cheek, and Weyoun tried not to stare at the single track cutting through the layers of powder and contouring. "We'd like to have the memorial soon. When the monsoon ends. It…I think it would mean so much to Deimos if you would speak."

Tenses were still so difficult. Nothing meant anything to Deimos anymore, and never would again, but Weyoun didn't correct her. "What would you like me to say?" he asked instead.

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "I was hoping you would deliver the eulogy."

The iron in his throat contracted, or maybe it expanded—in any case, it felt as though a cold fist was constricting his heart and lungs, and it was a moment before he could ask, "Why?"

At this word, Bolina Ekroi looked sadder than she had at any point in this conversation. "I told you. You knew him better than anyone." For a moment, she seemed to struggle with what to say. "It would be absurd for any of us to stand there and pretend we knew Deimos. I'm not a fool. My son wanted as little to do with us as possible, and I know your opinion of us can't be high because of that. But he was still my son, and I loved him. You understand that, don't you?"

It was amazing how grief could break down the barriers that were supposed to prop up polite society. In normal circumstances, any part of this would have sent Weyoun mentally scuttling for cover. Now, he just put a hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. "Of course I do," he replied, hearing how hollow the words sounded.

When he opened his eyes again to look at her, she had that same unhappy smile on her face. "You have a mother somewhere, don't you, Weyoun?"

At that, he laughed. "You can be forgiven for not being aware, Doyenne, but my parents have been dead for years, and I hadn't seen them for years before that." He smiled with a touch too much bitterness. "You see, I didn't get along with my family, either."

How had he and Deimos sensed that about each other, practically right from the beginning? It had cemented their friendship early, this feeling of kinship with the outgoing young man—boy, really—that he'd sat next to in his very first class of his very first day of university.

He'd been trying to balance a pencil on his finger when Weyoun had walked into the classroom and taken the seat next to him. It was a sharp-edged detail in his memory, as though even at sixteen he'd known he was meeting someone that would shape him for the rest of his life. At the time he'd just thought it was odd—old-fashioned—to see someone holding a pencil. Maybe that was why he'd taken the seat, when he could have sat anywhere.

The boy had flashed a grin at him and put the pencil down, but they didn't exchange any words until the teacher broke them out into small groups and assigned them a piece of legislation to dissect and then present to the rest of the class. The third person in their group, a girl, had pulled up the text of the law on her padd and read, "SF10946.2, Regulation of hive temperature in apiaries totaling more than 20 queens." She'd rolled her eyes. "I thought we'd get something more interesting than this."

Weyoun had cocked his head at her. "Just because it doesn't seem interesting doesn't mean it's not important." He'd thought about it for a second, knowing he needed to back this up with something concrete. "An apiary of that size would provide a huge amount of food."

The boy with the pencil had rested his chin on his hand, his elbow propped on his desk. "That's anywhere from 400,000 to a million bees. Do you have any idea how many Vorta that would feed?"

Mutely, the girl shook her head. Weyoun had turned to the boy. "What's the typical range of a worker bee?"

"No idea, let's look it up." He flipped his padd up and his fingers skittered across the surface, and he said, "They can forage up to nine kilometers from the hive."

Weyoun had nodded thoughtfully. "So situate an industrial apiary near farmland and those bees will pollinate kilometers and kilometers of fields."

"Making it pretty important to keep them alive and comfortable," the boy agreed with a grin.

The girl had looked sour, no doubt feeling slighted at their refusal to agree with her that the subject was boring. "If it's so important, then apiculturists would keep the hives at the right temperature without the Council telling them to. It's their whole livelihood," she'd said. "They're hurt just as much by bees dying as anyone else is. More, even."

Something had struck Weyoun at that. "When was this legislation passed?" he'd asked without explanation.

"59,098," the girl had said, sounding even more sour that no one had responded to her.

"59,098," he'd mumbled, searching the network on his own padd. He'd been certain he was right about what he was thinking, but he'd wanted to make sure. Then, he'd found it and said, mostly to himself, "That's what I thought."

"What?" the boy had asked.

Turning to him, Weyoun had said, "In 59,094, colony collapse disorder wiped out most of the hives in the northern hemisphere." Which was as good as saying most of the hives on the planet, since ninety percent of the industrial apiaries were situated above the equator.

"The Dwindle Famine," the boy had said, snapping his fingers. "You're right! Almost a million people died of starvation."

"So what?" the girl had asked.

Weyoun had raised an eyebrow at her. "A _million people_ died. The Council couldn't sit there and do _nothing_. They started regulating apiaries more strictly. Whether or not that's actually prevented a repeat of the famine is anyone's guess."

He'd received an appreciative look from the boy with the pencil, and at the end of the class, after they had presented their discussion of the legislation, he'd held out a hand to stop Weyoun from leaving. "I never introduced myself," he'd said. Weyoun had clasped his hand as the boy added, "Deimos Ekron. You are…?"

"Weyoun Uldron." He remembered that moment so distinctly, that tiny caught breath that he hadn't trained himself not to hold yet, while he waited for any new acquaintance to pause, to look him up and down, and wonder what a person with a gutter-scum surname was doing at Tira University. Especially someone with his classmate's name—yes, Weyoun had recognized it. One didn't grow up in the slums without associating the name Ekron with blocks upon blocks of ramshackle, tenement housing. Not that Weyoun's family had ever been able to afford a flat in any of them.

But the boy hadn't given him this familiar once-over. He'd just grinned and said, "I'm starving. Do you want to get breakfast with me?"

The doyenne was watching him, thinking, no doubt, that a normal citizen shouldn't have said such a thing to a grieving mother, let alone a senator to a constituent. "I'm afraid that's what I have to offer, Doyenne Ekroi," he said, his tone holding the bitterness that he hadn't tried very hard to exorcise from his earlier smile. "If I deliver a eulogy, I won't lie about Deimos. I won't tell everyone how much his family meant to him, how much he treasured the time he spent with all of you." It was insane to say this out loud, but now that he'd begun, he found that he couldn't stop. "I'm not going to tell anything but the truth about him, because that's what he deserves, and that's what he would want."

 _Really?_ a small voice asked in his head. _Is that why you refuse to ask about Ground Control's inquiry into his death? Don't you want to know the_ truth _?_

Not that truth. That wasn't about Deimos. Not really. That was about something much bigger, something much uglier, and nothing good would come of looking under that rock. Maybe it was smaller than Deimos. Weyoun didn't know anymore. It wouldn't bring him back, anyway.

Weyoun had once believed vaguely that when a Vorta died, their soul would join the Founders in paradise, because that was what the cleric had taught in the shrine he'd attended as a young boy. She'd been a kind woman who'd seemed ancient to him then, and she'd given her destitute flock what they needed to hear: the promise of something better in the next life, even if this one was nasty, brutish, and short. He remembered thinking that he wasn't going to wait around to die to have something better, but even though he'd clawed his way out of the gutter, the belief in that vision of the afterlife had stuck with him.

But it was clearly untrue, wasn't it? There was a Founder here now, and Weyoun was certain that she wasn't shuttling the souls of dead Vorta to any kind of afterlife. Whatever there was after death, he very much doubted that the Founders had anything to do with it. If Deimos, or some part of him, somehow remained in the universe, it wasn't in any way that any of them had ever been taught by their religion.

He didn't think he'd say any of that in the eulogy.

Doyenne Ekroi appeared to be mustering every ounce of her willpower to hold her emotions in check. "I don't know what he would want," she said, her voice thick. "Don't you see? I didn't know him. I never did the right things for Deimos, and by the time I realized how much I'd pushed him away, it was too late. He was exacting with his forgiveness."

That had never been Weyoun's experience, but then, he'd never needed Deimos's forgiveness. More likely, Deimos had decided as a boy that his family's transgressions were too great, and that the language of apology and forgiveness simply couldn't translate across the gulf that opened up between them. It was how Weyoun had felt about his own family before he'd even turned ten years old.

He put his hand to his forehead again. Tears stung at his eyes and he squeezed them shut for a second, seeing starburst explosions across the backs of his eyelids. What had Deimos seen before he'd died? There had been something out there, and he'd died for seeing it.

 _Stop_.

His best friend had died for whatever he'd found, and Weyoun didn't plan on following in his footsteps. "I'll deliver the eulogy," he said, his eyes still closed. Perhaps the doyenne thought doing so would provide _him_ with some kind of closure. Maybe she thought she was doing him a favor. She should have known better—there was no closure from a loss like this, just a wound that bled more and more slowly with the passage of time. She'd lost a child, and he'd lost part of himself. There was no making either of them whole ever again.

"Thank you," Doyenne Ekroi breathed.

Weyoun forced his eyes open. At least she wasn't crying anymore. Yes, he would give the eulogy. He wouldn't regret that as well, wouldn't add that to the growing pile of his regrets. He hadn't gone to the launch, hadn't even remembered it had been happening until it was over. "Make sure the media isn't there," he said.

Her face went white with shock, or maybe even anger. He supposed he'd as good as accused her of fishing for her fifteen minutes of fame, and it probably hadn't been fair. "Of course the media won't be there," she said tightly. Anger, then. It was no more than he deserved.

He nodded. "Is there anything else I can do for you, Doyenne?" he asked in a shallow attempt to restore propriety to this conversation. What a stupid question—as though they'd been discussing a piece of legislation that was going to affect her tax bracket.

Shaking her head and lowering her eyes, she replied, "No. Thank you for your time, Senator. I'll send the details about the memorial to you as soon as I have them."

Weyoun inclined his head and was saved from having to respond by Ekroi ending the call. He rested his forehead on his fingertips, his elbows stinging where they were planted on the table, and glanced at his interface as it lit up with an internal message. _Lunch?_ Leto asked.

He swiped a hand across his eyes and was relieved when his fingers came away dry, even if the lump in his throat still threatened to overwhelm him at any moment. His senior aide was concerned about him. His entire staff was. They'd all known Deimos, but Leto had been his friend, too, and he'd barely spared any thought for how she must have been feeling. He would have liked to think they'd get through this together but he knew that was a trite platitude.

Still. _Yes_ , he typed back.

On Deimos's first day as the director of Ground Control, Weyoun had arrived at his office early, takeaway breakfast in hand. Deimos had laughed when Weyoun had put it down on his new desk. "Old habits, I guess?" he'd asked.

Smiling, Weyoun had replied, "Yes, though I have to apologize. I didn't get it from the Complex canteen. It looked disappointingly healthy—I hope you can forgive the breach of conduct."

Deimos had opened the box and sighed heavily. "Weyoun, this looks so _edible_. My taste buds haven't been conditioned for something with actual flavor this early in the morning."

There were boxes everywhere, most of them open but only partially unpacked, and the office already looked as though the monsoon had torn through it. Even Deimos's chair had a pile of books teetering on it. Weyoun had clasped his hands behind his back and found his eyes drawn to the only thing to make it from a box to the wall as of yet—a chart of the solar system, with a pipe dream route to the scattered disc, beyond the outermost gas giants, plotted on it. Maybe it wasn't such a pipe dream anymore, now that a Vorta had been to space. "You know, Deimos," he'd said, "it was lucky we met."

"I know," Deimos had said, arranging the takeaway boxes on the only remaining clear spot on his desk. With a gleam in his eye, he'd added, "If I hadn't had friends in high places, I'd never have been on that first shuttle."

Weyoun had laughed. "Exactly."

This wasn't what either of them had meant, but they'd both understood that.

Over breakfast, Weyoun would tell Deimos about Eris's miscarriage only days earlier, about the pain of it and the fact that the grief felt foolish; about his greater grief that he hadn't been with her when she needed him because he hadn't even known. But for a few minutes, he'd let all of that recede.

In his own office, with fresh, raw grief cratering his gut and head and heart, Weyoun stood slowly. The conversation with Bolina Ekroi had drilled through what few reserves he'd had left, and he had to stand very still for a moment. He'd go to lunch. He'd fill his days with work. He'd go home and write a eulogy which would never be fitting enough, never say enough, about his friend, even though everyone would tell him it was beautiful. He'd hurt, and he'd do it alone, because after today he wouldn't show it in public.

He didn't owe the Ekron family. But he owed Deimos more than he'd ever said. He hoped that Deimos understood.


	2. 60,053: Ninthmonth

There was a knock on the door and Eris glanced up. Her office hours had ended forty minutes ago, but she'd never turned away a student whose sense of timekeeping was more casual than hers. A failing, her colleagues at Tira University would say. At Mikrath, everyone had been far more tolerant of such temporal lapses, and it was the sort of thing, she supposed, that made Pegrill natives sniff about Tira City. Everyone in the capital was always rushing around, thinking whatever they were doing was the most important thing to have ever been done by anyone; no one ever made time for anyone else or stopped to consider that an unscheduled detour in one's full schedule might be beneficial, even rewarding.

Eris had never particularly been one to do things the way others expected her too, though. She shared neither Tira natives' love of over-scheduling every minute of their days, nor what she supposed, as someone born and raised in Pegrill, an inborn tendency to sneer at such things.

"Come in," she said, setting her lecture notes aside.

The door opened and a man she didn't recognize walked in. He certainly wasn't one of her students, and she'd never seen him in the Anthropology Department. "Sorry to arrive uninvited like this, Miss Arethoi," he said. "Or is it Professor Arethoi? I hope I'm not interrupting you."

She cocked her head. The idea of her being Professor Arethoi was amusing. She was twenty-three, years away from tenure and the right to lay claim to the title. "No to both," she replied. "'Miss' is fine, and I'm just finalizing my lecture for tomorrow. I'm afraid I have to apologize though—you seem to know me, but I don't know you."

The man stepped further into the room, offering her an easy, charming grin. He was a few years older than her, with bright, intelligent eyes, and a suit that marked him as definitely _not_ an academic. Finance then, or possibly politics on an important day. She was intrigued by his presence here. "I thought perhaps with all your accomplishments, you'd already be a tenured professor." When she raised an eyebrow at this, his grin got a little wider. Good, then he knew she saw through the attempt to flatter her. He held out a hand, and she rose to her feet to take it politely. "Deimos Ekron," he said. "I work for the Department for Scientific Advancement at the Capitol Complex."

"The science lobby," Eris said, withdrawing her hand.

Ekron looked pleased that she knew this shorthand. Well, of course she did. She'd been in Tira City nine months, and the place revolved around the Capitol Complex and the goings-on there. Politics was everything in their capital, and it was inescapable even for those, like her, who preferred to stay uninvolved. But even if that wasn't the case, she would know the science lobby for one important reason: there was a hearing in progress that would determine the future of the excavation site that she was working at, with the lobbyists on one side and a Tira Exarchate senator on the other, and it was going very badly for the lobbyists. Which meant it was going very badly for _her_ , even though she had no involvement in the hearing itself. If the senator won, the site would be paved over for a shopping center. It made her blood boil to think about it.

Suddenly, she realized she _did_ know his name. "You're working on the case," she said. "I've read your name in the daily political briefs." _Daily political briefs._ The Eris of a year ago would have rolled her eyes to know that her future self would know such a thing existed, let alone that she was reading them. It likely would have been better for her mental health if she didn't, but the compulsion to stay informed about the minutiae of a case that she had no way of affecting was too strong.

"Well, my reputation usually precedes me," Ekron said. "And I'm glad you're following the case. That is, I assume that's why you're reading the daily political briefings? Not to disparage the no doubt fine prose, but they aren't the most thrilling."

"Of course I'm following the case," she said, still standing. "It's my site, and—I don't mean to be rude, Mr. Ekron, but you're losing."

He grimaced. "I know. That's why I'm here."

Eris blinked in surprise, then realized her entire body was tensed, and that they were both still standing. Bad manners; her mother would be appalled. "I'm sorry," she said, gesturing to the trio of chairs arranged in front of her desk. "I should have asked if you'd like to have a seat."

"Thank you," Ekron said, choosing one and pulling it closer so that he was facing her directly over the scratched desk. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together, resting them on the desk. "We thought it would be an easy case when we took it on last year. Hellad Metro Center's construction doesn't exactly enflame people's passions, and we thought if we played up the importance of the excavation, and perhaps submitted proposals for some sort of anthropological park, that it would be open and shut. But then Senator Soltoi got involved."

Her expression hardened. "Yes, I've read up on some of the senator's exploits. I don't think we agree on very much when it comes to policy." And even if they had, it was too difficult for her to see what Soltoi was doing in Hellad as anything other than a crusade against Vorta history. She hadn't been in Tira Exarchate long enough to be used to thinking of Senator Soltoi as her senator, and to be perfectly frank, she didn't really want to. Senators Nesenoi and Parnon completed the trifecta, and she wasn't proud of the fact that she knew little about any of them. In Pegrill, she'd been informed enough to vote. If she stayed in Tira, all she knew was that she'd vote against Soltoi.

"We're in agreement on that," he said. Then, his expression set itself into determination. "Miss Arethoi, the reason I wanted to speak with you was because I wanted to ask you if you'd do me the rather massive honor of becoming our chief consultant on the case."

This took her aback for a long moment, so much so that she actually leaned back in her chair. Perhaps it shouldn't have; after all, she _was_ the lead excavator, and at this point, no one knew more about the site, or cared as much about it, as she did. "Me?" she finally asked, more inarticulately than she preferred to be.

His easy grin returned. "Of course. Who better?"

"Don't you already have a chief consultant?"

"Ah. Well, yes. Professor Felgron. You must know him."

She did, and she also already knew that he was working with the science lobby. "Yes. Professor Felgron is an impressive scholar, but his specialty is medieval tea ceremonies." She raised her eyebrows. "It's a far cry from Palaeolithic artifacts."

This drew another grimace from Ekron. "True, though he had an interest in it. At the time, that was enough. He was the only person we could find who wanted to take on the work. You know Vorta, Miss Arethoi, especially Vorta here. They aren't interested in anything that happened two weeks ago, let alone sixty thousand years."

Wryly, she said, "I believe the size of the anthropology department here is testament to that fact." One hallway, four teachers, and ten post-graduate students—and it was one of the largest anthropology departments on the planet.

"Exactly." Ekron looked at her intently. "We've needed someone with your acumen and knowledge from the start. I've been trying to convince my colleagues of the value of approaching you for a number of months now."

To buy herself time to think about this offer—more of a request, really—she said, "You must have some knowledge on the subject yourself, Mr. Ekron."

He laughed. "I do _now;_ I've read everything I could get my hands on since this case started, but it's hardly sufficient. I'm an astronomer; the lobby assigned me to this case because I made the mistake of mentioning in an annual review that I was looking for more of a challenge. We don't even _have_ an anthropologist on staff, just an historian, and he's on a mining case right now."

"That seems like an oversight," she said.

That made him laugh again. "I can take that under advisement," he said. "And the truth of it is rather undeniable at the moment. That's why we need you, you see?" He stopped to draw in a breath. "I don't want to sound fawning, but you're one of the most brilliant anthropologists ever. You've made major discoveries at every site you've worked on. Before you excavated there, the established settlement date for Laksim was twenty-thousand years ago, but you showed that it was an full ten thousand years earlier. Your work showed that early Vorta were working metal in what we still consider the Palaeolithic, and that burial rituals existed prior to permanent settlement. You're well on your way to proving that the caste system was in place in the earliest Vorta settlements. That's only a fraction of it. None of this was established fact before you came along, Miss Arethoi." He leaned back in the chair. "You're only twenty-three years old and you're now the lead excavator at the most high-profile anthropological site in Tira Exarchate—maybe on the entire planet. With you, we could win this case and stop Hellad Metro Center from being built."

Even though she was well aware of her list of accomplishments, it still took her aback slightly to hear them listed out in this way. She only wanted to show the truth about their people—the actual truth, based on science and material remains, not guesswork and assumptions. It wasn't about being brilliant, or the best, or doing something that no one else ever had. If, in the course of her work, she was led to things that no one else had ever considered, then she would correct that oversight. Those oversights were her gain.

But she'd never expected to be asked to participate in something like this. Politics were something to be disdained, in Pegrill, in her family, and for her personally. Politicians were tedious at best, bloviating as a matter of course, and slimy opportunists at worst. But Ekron was right—she was an expert, and with her, they could win. A flare of hard longing lit up in her to stop construction of that odious mall and to save her site, especially considering what she'd uncovered there on the final day of excavation before the monsoon had begun.

"How long do you expect to the hearing to go on?" she asked slowly.

He shrugged. "At the moment, not much longer. But you'd help us turn things around. Another month or two? It should be done by the end of the monsoon so it doesn't interfere with your excavation."

Eris rested her fingertips on the desktop and didn't speak. Ekron watched her, his head tilted, his intelligent eyes doing their best to read her. It was tempting to agree, but she knew she needed to think about this, if only for a few more minutes. She narrowed her eyes slightly. "You said you're an astronomer. Why are you working on the Hellad Metro Center hearing?"

Putting his hands in his lap, he replied, "We have a policy in the science lobby of not limiting ourselves to our own fields."

"Does that work?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

With that same easy smile, Ekron replied, "It does. Well, most of the time. You're not the first to question it, though."

She laughed a little. "I suppose I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who doesn't understand politics. You might not be that impressed with me if I agreed to consult, Mr. Ekron—I'm not a politician, and to be perfectly honest, I don't care for most of them. No offense, of course."

"None taken, but then again, I don't consider myself a politician," he replied, grinning.

A smile twitched at her mouth. It was hard not to like him, a fact which he undoubtedly was well aware of. "My point is, I'm a researcher, and a passable teacher because I have to be. Standing in a hearing chamber and trying to score political points…it's not really my style."

Ekron tilted his head again. "I don't think it's so different than what you do normally." When she raised a doubtful eyebrow, he said, "Really—is it? Your job is to stand in front of a roomful of clueless people and convince them that what you'resaying is right. And I can assure you, the people in that hearing chamber are even more clueless about anthropology than any of your students."

"True, but no one speaks after me to tell them why I'm wrong." Folding her hands on the desk, she added, "And I don't usually get cross-examined in my lectures."

Waving a hand, he said, "That part's easy, and we can coach you. If you don't mind me saying, Miss Arethoi, it's hard to imagine that you aren't the model of grace under pressure."

She pursed her lips, though she wasn't going to deny this. Poise wasn't ever something that had been an issue for her. "If I come work with you, you'll have to stop that."

His brow furrowed. "Stop what?"

Gesturing towards him, she said, "Flattery. Compliments. I don't need to be charmed."

He looked taken aback. She supposed it hadn't been the Tira City thing to say. But then, a crooked grin spread across his face. "I like you, Miss Arethoi. And you have my word, when you come work for us, anything complimentary I say about you will be thoroughly vetted beforehand to ascertain the veracity of it."

"'When?'" she said.

He gave her an astute look and she returned his stare unblinkingly. It struck her that Deimos Ekron was likely _also_ quite the model of grace under pressure. She wondered how an astronomer had come to be employed by the Capitol Complex science lobby, and then decided that she would ask him, after an appropriate amount of time had passed. "I don't think you're going to let Soltoi win this hearing when it means a sixty-thousand year old site will get paved over to build a shopping center," he said.

There was a silence after this, and she allowed it to lengthen. She didn't think she was fooling him, though—as he said, she wasn't going to let Soltoi win the hearing and pave over a sixty-thousand year old site. Against her better judgement, she thought about the footprints she'd uncovered on the very last day of excavation before the monsoon had begun. The intervening months had done nothing to change her opinion that she'd found the footprints of a Founder— _the_ Founder, who'd visited their planet millennia ago and set their people on the path to civilization—and beside them, Vorta footprints. She wouldn't say they were Kurill's, because that wasn't academically sound. But it didn't stop her from thinking of them as such, anyway.

"All right," Eris said. "When do you need me there?"

Ekron grinned brightly, though he didn't look surprised. "As soon as possible. We'll need a few days to bring you up to speed. How soon can you start?"

Pulling her padd towards her and opening up her calendar, she said, "I have lectures three times a week. I'll need to rearrange them."

"Hearings are in session every afternoon during the week," he volunteered.

She nodded. "Then I can start tomorrow. I'll be there in the morning, right away at 8:00?" A thrill went through her as what she'd just agreed to sank in. If she pulled this off, she'd make a real difference—not just academically, but a real, material difference to Kurill's anthropological legacy. Then, an old thought intruded. An old anger, scabbed to bitter scar tissue at this point. The memory of Kenassa, the Low Iron Age site in Pegrill that she'd watched get paved over for a housing estate after a failed local hearing, still chafed at her. As a girl, she'd spent hours and hours at those ruins, exploring, playing at being a scientist. The older she'd gotten, the more she'd actually learned about the place, until it had hit her, at the age of thirteen, that anthropology was what she wanted to do with her life.

But she was born too late to save Kenassa. She'd submitted statements to the local council during the hearing, laying out the research that had been done on the site and its importance to Pegrill. It hadn't mattered—of _course_ it hadn't mattered. She'd been a child. Maybe she wouldn't have listened to herself, either. She'd only been fourteen, after all. A fourteen-year-old girl, too precocious for her own good. It had been a hard lesson. No one listened to you when you were nobody.

The next year, she'd gained early entrance into Mikrath University and finished in only two years. And now, when she had something to say about anthropology, everyone listened.

Ekron stood and offered her his hand again, smiling broadly. As she stood and took his hand again, he said, "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Thank you, Miss Arethoi. I think I feel the whole hearing turning around already."

"I'll try not to disappoint," she said, smiling slightly.

Bowing his head slightly, Ekron turned on his heel and left her office. Eris laid her hands flat on her desk and leaned over, still smiling to herself. For someone who didn't enjoy politics in the slightest, she had to admit to herself—she was rather looking forward to tomorrow.

* * *

Ekron met her in the Capitol Complex lobby. While she waited for him, she stared up at the dome, her arms crossed over her chest. Lights were set into the drum, and despite the skylights ringing the cupola, the artificial light provided more illumination. It was only the third month of the monsoon and she was already tired of it; she was anxious to open her site again and take a closer look not just at what she'd uncovered on the final day of excavation, but at all the trenches they'd opened. There were carbon deposits that needed to be dated and a possible burial site. Of course, if the science lobby lost the hearing, there might never be a chance to do any of that.

The Complex was a hive of activity—not that she'd expected anything less. There was a constant stream of people checking in and being met by harried looking—aides? She didn't know the terminology, or how to tell someone's position within this world. Everyone was dressed in the same blandly professional suits, and most of them were staring at padds as they walked. There was a self-importance to all of it that she found mildly distasteful.

Still, the building was nice.

"Miss Arethoi!"

She turned at the voice and saw Ekron hurrying towards her. "Sorry to keep you waiting. Have you eaten? We've got a canteen downstairs, though the most you can say about it is that the food is adequate."

"I had breakfast at home," she said. "Maybe some other time. Your description of it certainly does…er, tempt one."

He laughed. "After having the food, it tempts one to turn around and never come back. We just continue eating there because our taste has been deadened after consuming it for so long." Motioning to her, he said, "Anyway, come with me, we can walk past the hearing chamber on our way down to the science lobby offices; it's a slight detour but it's the best I can do for a tour today."

She raised an eyebrow. "That's all right. I'm not here to sightsee."

"No, I suppose not." Nevertheless, after the reception desk had given her the access disc that had been granted to her, he led her back into the Complex, pointing out notable landmarks. "This is hearing chamber one—we won't be in here; not important enough, I suppose, we're down here, in four…"

By the time they reached the science lobby offices, she felt like she _had_ gotten the full tour of the Complex, though she knew the place was vast and she'd only seen a small fraction of it. The offices were chaotic and loud, with staff talking to each other over cubicle walls, feverishly typing at their interfaces, and rushing back and forth. A few people glanced up and said hello to Deimos as he passed, and he stopped for a brief conversation with a colleague ("I haven't been able to look into that preliminary casework on those supposed anti-miscarriage vitamins yet—tomorrow though—").

When they arrived at his office, Eris was taken aback for a moment by the explosion of clutter. His desk was a disaster zone, with padds, papers, holodiscs, photos, pens and pencils, and curios scattered across it. Eris thought she could see a sketchpad buried under everything. The walls were covered in maps, charts, satellite photos, and telescope photography of everything from the other terrestrial bodies in the solar system to nebulae. One chart of the solar system showed a line that stretched from their planet out past the orbit of the outermost planet, into the edges of their solar system—the area that, if memory served, was known as the scattered disc.

Ekron started riffling through the piles on his desk while Eris stood there, one eyebrow arched. "I thought we could start with the cast of characters," he said as he dug around. "Theirs first, then I'll bring you to meet the rest of our our team. Ah, here we are." He pulled a padd out from a pile of papers and thumbed the activation. A photo came up, which he turned around to face her. As Eris leaned over to study it, he planted a finger above the central figure in the photo. "Senator Ara Soltoi," he said. "She'll be there every day, but she only speaks if she's got a particularly important point to make. Or if her speaking at all will prove the point. Some politics, there, I'm sorry to say."

"I've accustomed myself to the idea at this point," she said, studying the photo.

Ekron flashed a smile at her and indicated a row of Vorta sitting on the second tier of seats behind Soltoi. "This is a revolving cast of junior aides. Depending on how involved they are with the case, some will be there most days, others you'll only see once in awhile." He tapped a finger on one woman. "This is Loura Thelesoi; you'll see a lot of her."

Reaching for the photo, Eris asked, "May I?" When Ekron nodded and relinquished it, she pulled it towards herself. The arrangement of the senator and her aides reminded her of nothing so much as a thesis defense. Thinking of it that way made her strategy click into place, and she knew in that moment that she'd win this hearing for the science lobby, but more importantly, for Hellad. For the Vorta, though most of them would never appreciate it, and for the Founders, who would never know.

She cocked her head while she studied the photo, asking after a minute, "Who's this man on her right? Senators have senior aides, don't they?"

With another nod, Ekron said, "Yes, and that's him. Weyoun Uldron." If Eris hadn't known better, she would have said that there was a note of fondness in Ekron's voice. "The senior aide is the one that _really_ runs the hearing for the senator. Mr. Uldron is very smart, but—and I'm sure he'd be deeply hurt to hear this—I have more faith in you."

Raising an eyebrow as she pushed the photo back to him, she asked, "And why is that?"

There was a gleam in his eyes. "Because _you_ care."

"Senator Soltoi and her aides care about winning, I imagine," Eris said.

"Against you, and against this site, I don't think that will be enough."

She cocked her head, wishing that she could actually use her most compelling point in this hearing. But she couldn't bring up the fact that she thought she'd uncovered a Founder's footprints, nor Kurill's, the Vorta that had saved the Founder from death all those millennia ago and who had given his name to their planet. With only her own research on the discovery, she couldn't. It wasn't sound science, and it went against her own principles. "You're still trying to charm me, Mr. Ekron."

With a laugh, he said, "You may as well call me Deimos; we're very much the dysfunctional family down here."

"Oh?" This hadn't exactly addressed what she'd said.

"The hours we spend together breed a certain amount of familiarity. The senatorial staffs think we're far too informal—it's not a requirement, if you'd rather not be on a first name basis."

She laughed. "It's fine. I think I appreciate it." Attempt to charm her notwithstanding, the thing she _really_ appreciated about Ekron—Deimos—was that she thought he might be developing into her first real friend in Tira City, outside the relationships she'd formed with her excavation team. It was a stupid thing to think, considering she'd only known him for a day, but she found his openness refreshing. Her only direct experience with politicians had been at the Kenassa hearing, and there'd be no science lobby in Pegrill to stand up to the developers. He was nothing like any of them, and the science lobby offices didn't fit her expectation of what political offices should look like, either.

After a moment, she added, "You can call me Eris, I suppose. It's not really how things are done, though, is it?"

"Life's far too short to stand on formality all the time," he said.

"Mm," she replied. Let him decide if she was agreeing or not. "I hope this isn't an attempt at flirtation."

With a chuckle, Deimos said, "If it was, would it be working?"

"I'm afraid not." Her gaze grew wary. "I hope I don't need to say that I wouldn't find anything in that vein conducive to my work on this case."

Deimos ducked his head. "Point taken. To be honest, Miss Arethoi, I haven't had the time for romantic entanglements lately, and that wasn't my intent." Meeting her eyes, he added, "I hope you'll accept my apologies."

She took a seat in one of the chairs in his office. "There's no apology necessary." After a pause, she said, "And I meant it. You can call me Eris."

A smile twitched at his mouth. "All right, then. Eris. How much do you know about legislative hearings?"

"Not very much," she admitted. "I've followed the case through the daily briefs, as I said, but I've had to grasp the structure from context. Needless to say, my grasp isn't particularly inspiring."

"That's fine. That's why we're here today. The procedural aspects won't be difficult for you to understand, and you've been keeping up on the progress of the case—or rather, lack thereof—on your own. That leaves us plenty of time to talk strategy."

Nodding, Eris leaned forward in her chair and looked at him intently. "I can read about procedure on my own. I'm more interested in the personalities on Soltoi's side. You said Soltoi only speaks if she's got a particularly important point to make. Are her remarks prepared?"

"Yes, but she's quick on her feet." He snorted. "You don't get elected to six terms in the Council any other way, I suppose."

Eris raised her eyebrows. "Six terms?"

Putting his hands up, palms out, Deimos said, "She's been on the Council longer than I've been alive. I _did_ vote against her the last two times she was up for reelection, not that it counted for much." He put his hands down and drummed his fingers on the desk. "Soltoi's quite deep in the pockets of Yelar Industries. I doubt she cares one way or the other about Hellad Metrocenter's construction—it's not as though she would ever shop there—far too pedestrian for her. Yelar's already sunk a lot of money into the development of this site, though, and they're not going to give it up without a fight. Thus, Soltoi's involvement." Picking the padd up, he swiped his fingers across the screen and said, "In the last election, over thirty percent of Soltoi's campaign contributions came from Yelar, so she owes them."

"Hm." None of this was particularly surprising, and it only hardened her opinion against politicians—all of them, though she reserved a special scorn for Soltoi and her staff. "Have you ever won a case against her?"

With a nod, Deimos said, "A couple. And before you ask—" He held up a finger. "—yes, I've lost some too. Not that I should take full responsibility for it; I've never been the lead on any of those hearings."

She hadn't thought to ask who was leading this hearing. Some of that procedure that she needed to read up on, clearly. "And the lead on _this_ hearing?"

"Me, nominally." He propped the padd on its edge on the desk. "In practice, though, I'm sharing the honor with my colleague, Melete. She's our head chemist, specializes in organic chemistry."

An organic chemist and an astronomer were heading up a hearing about a Palaeolithic site—it sounded like a recipe for disaster, but he seemed confident that she'd turn things around for them. "What about Soltoi's aides?" she asked. "Are they competent? What do I need to know about them?"

Deimos shrugged. "They're all competent, some of them quite a bit more so. Thelesoi and Weyoun—Uldron—are her best aides, that's why they're the most senior. Weyoun has frankly been a thorn in my side for this entire hearing. He's good at his job. Just as smart as Soltoi and probably more ambitious."

Though she didn't remark on it, it didn't escape her notice that he referred to Soltoi's senior aide by his first name. It seemed that Deimos was friendly with those on what appeared to her to be the opposing side. She didn't think she could ever be that personable.

Putting the padd down on the desk, he said, "Thelesoi gets flustered if you push her hard enough. She'll get irritable."

"Uldron?"

He shook his head. "I've never seen him flustered at a hearing. We'll need to trap him into saying the wrong thing, which is difficult, but not impossible. And as far as Soltoi's concerned, the key is to look righteous compared to her. You're a crusader, she's in this purely for political gain. That sort of thing."

Eris folded her hands in her lap. "Do you think that will matter? It seems that _everything_ here is for political gain, and everyone knows it."

"Just because we all know it doesn't mean we don't like to cloak it in niceties and high-minded ideals." He flashed a grin at her. "That's the fun of politics."

With a sniff, she said, "You see it as a game. I can't. All of this matters—maybe not to Soltoi or her staff, or even to you, but it matters to me."

Deimos met her eyes intently. "I know. That's what I've been telling you. You see that gamesmanship as a detriment to your ability to sway this case, but it's the opposite. Seeing someone for whom this is _not_ a game—that will matter to the Council voting body. That's why you're such an asset." After a pause, he added, "It's not a game to me, by the way, or to most of us, frankly."

When she raised an eyebrow, he looked like he already knew what she was going to say. "Even Soltoi's staff?"

"Even Soltoi's staff." He leaned back in his chair. "You have to understand that most politicians come up through the ranks of Complex staff, and that means one's personal opinion isn't really relevant."

"I know that. Academia isn't dissimilar." Loyalty to one's benefactor was more important than anything else in a Vorta's professional life, but she was insulated from that somewhat by virtue of her contributions to her field.

He smiled slightly. "It's a habit that most don't break, I'm afraid, and which there isn't much incentive to break. Smile more and don't let anyone else know what you're really thinking, yes?"

Inclining her head in acknowledgement of this point, she said, "So, you expect me to be passionate, but not too passionate…care, but not too much?"

"I suppose so."

Eris returned his slight smile. A challenge, then, which was what she was best at. "I think I can walk that line."


End file.
